Tracy Porter has that Monday-after-a-game look. He gets out of the SUV that drops him off at Chophouse in New Orleans and walks gingerly, like if he fell he’d break into a million pieces. He has a cast on one hand and a brace on the other.

But if happy memories can make pain go away, Porter is in luck. He is here to talk about the biggest play in New Orleans Saints history—his interception return for a touchdown that sealed the team's first Super Bowl victory two years ago.

But before getting to that, a story from dinner: Porter orders a steak medium well, emphasis on well and asks the waiter, “Can I have a huge favor?” He asks for the steak to be delivered cut up—it would be hard if not impossible to do it himself with two bad hands. The waiter, a 20-something man who has given no indication he recognizes Porter, says, “I remember an interception from a couple years ago that equals all the favors you want.”

Going into Super Bowl XLIV against the Colts, Porter had already made the biggest defensive play in Saints history—an interception of a Brett Favre pass at the end of regulation in the NFC championship game to preserve a tie. That pick stopped the Vikings from reaching field goal territory, and the Saints won in overtime.

On top of the awesomeness of the same nice guy making the two biggest plays in team history, that nice guy is also a local boy who grew up a huge Saints fan. On top of that, as all football fans know, the Saints’ history to that point had been almost entirely one of futility. So: Local boy brings home Lombardi Trophy to long-suffering fans. Yeah, that works. For crisp and clean sports stories, it doesn’t get much better.

Setting the scene for the Super Bowl play: The Saints are up, 24-17, with 3:12 left in the game, and Peyton Manning is leading the Colts on a drive that had already consumed 39 yards. The Colts had the ball on the Saints’ 31. It was third-and-5.

In preparing for this game, Porter had watched “cutups” of the Colts. That is, he watched all Indianapolis’ plays of third-and-1 or less, third-and-2 to third-and-7, etc. As he lined up on the right side, Porter took one look at the Colts’ alignment and knew exactly what route wide receiver Reggie Wayne was going to run.

“I had seen it over and over and over again,” he says. “Malcolm Jenkins happened to be the inside corner. We knew what was coming. He and I made eye contact that we were going to switch the receivers.”

That meant Jenkins would take Austin Collie, leaving Porter on Wayne. “He was going to try to widen me out. I didn’t widen out. I broke, and the ball was right there.”

Porter beat Wayne to the spot where Manning threw the ball; it hit him right in the gut. He squeezed—he doesn’t always have two bum hands.

“My first mindset, when I caught the ball, was to get on the numbers. That’s what (defensive coordinator) Gregg Williams teaches us: When you catch an interception, get on the numbers. A lot of guys get to the sideline, but they don’t have a lot of room to move. Our guys, they cleared the numbers. If you look at the play, I was on the numbers the whole way down the field.”

Once he got on the numbers, he entertained other thoughts. “Next thing, going through my head, a lot stuff. Man, I just picked Peyton Manning. First it was Brett Favre, then it was Peyton Manning. Then, it was: Score.”

That he did, running—along the numbers—untouched into the end zone. He pointed to no one in particular, just the Saints fans going crazy in the stands behind the end zone.

“When I was running, I saw an entire crowd of black and gold jumping up and down, jumping on top of each other, cheering my way to the end zone,” he says. “Every one I run into says when I was running and pointing, they were in the end zone. I’m like, ‘Come on now, it only seats so many people. They had Colts fans in there, too.’ ”

The touchdown essentially ended the game, though Porter didn’t fully relax until the Saints stopped the Colts’ final drive with less than a minute to go. He celebrated after the game on the field with his daughter, the woman who is now his wife, and his mom, who had driven to Miami from Louisiana because she never has and never will fly. (“If I go to the Pro Bowl, there is not a road from California to Hawaii. She’s going to have to get on a plane,” he says.)

His fondest memory from that incredible day is of holding his daughter, who was 1, on the field as confetti fell around them. “She was actually on stage with me, too. Michael Irvin fell in love with her. We’re filming live, and he’s playing with her,” he says.

He learned on the field after the game and in the days following how his life would change. Every reporter in the place wanted to talk to him. The city of New Orleans had a massive celebration and parade for the team. The NFL made a commercial showing of fans’ video reactions to his play. His hometown of Port Allen threw him a parade and temporarily changed its name to Porter Allen. “I tried to get them to change that permanently,” he says.

Not bad for a guy who didn’t start playing football until his junior year in high school, and only then because his friends and the coaches peer-pressured him into it. Now he will go down in history for executing two of the most famous plays in the history of his home team. He’ll never have to buy himself a drink again. And it couldn’t happen to a nicer guy. Porter looks at the whole thing exactly as you’d hope a guy would: He’s proud of it and doesn’t act like it wasn’t a big deal. But it’s not like he has gotten a big head over it, either.

“(Before that year), you might see one out of every 30 people would know who you are, true fans who know about football. After that game—it was the most watched program since M*A*S*H, (and) we topped those ratings; everybody saw it—next thing I know, I go into a store, and it went from one out of every 30 people to one out of every three,” he says. “I actually had two individuals come up to me and say they named their kid after me. One of them I think is named Tracy. The other, in fact, was named Porter.

“I’m always surprised. Not that I didn’t believe in myself or didn’t think I could do it, (but) I just feel like I’m a regular individual. So when someone runs up to me and wants an autograph, asks to speak to me, says they’re my biggest fan, I always laugh. Out of all the players in the NFL—the Drew Breeses, Reggie Bushes, Brett Favres, you have all these other guys—you chose me. I just find that weird and funny. I enjoy it.”

After he scored and got mobbed by his teammates, he simply dropped the ball in the end zone. A teammate grabbed it for him—that’s how it always goes when a Saints defender scores a touchdown. Porter bought a trophy case for the ball, and it sits on his mantel at his home in Louisiana. The other balls he has picked off are there, too. When visitors ask—and everybody asks—which one is the ball? He points, with a smile, to the Super Bowl logo.